Monday, October 27, 2014

Mary Amato is an award-winning children's book author, songwriter, musician, puppeteer, and poet. She writes for children of all ages, and is beginning to focus on YA. Her first YA novel was Guitar Notes. Mary lives with her family outside Washington, DC, where she also performs regularly, singing and playing her own songs. Mary is a popular speaker and runs numerous workshops for teachers and students, including many on all aspects of creative writing, even songwriting. The author lives in Silver Spring, MD.You can visit her online atwww.maryamato.com.

The eighth grade in my school had a literary “magazine.” I have that in quotes because it really was just a stapled collection of papers. Still, it was duplicated and distributed to the entire eighth grade. One of my poems appeared not just in the magazine, but on the front cover. That’s how I remember it, and I really hope I didn’t fictionalize that memory. At any rate, seeing my poem made public gave me the first taste of a writer’s life. The fame! The fortune! Just kidding. Seriously, though, what I experienced then and what I still experience today is the joy of sharing. It’s like making a meal and serving it. How gratifying.

I wish more schools had literary magazines, even if they were only published once a year. I believe that an experience like the one I had can make a lasting impression. It can give a kid a taste of what might become steady nutrition.

It took many years and lots of rejections before I became published as an adult, but that first poem published in the “Highland Fling” gave me the hope I needed to keep trying.

In this poignant, realistic, contemporary YA by a state master list star, perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen and Gayle Forman, a young songwriter builds a substitute family with her friends in place of the broken family she grew up with.

A hip high school girl who loves music, writes songs, and is desperate for a ukelele, learns to her shock that her father did not abandon her years ago and has been trying to keep in touch. She begins to investigate him, only to discover that he has a new life with a new family, including the perfect stepdaughter, a girl who Minerva despises.